Laina Mercer is a Research Statistician at the Institute for Disease Modeling working to support initiatives related to polio eradication, vaccine delivery, and reproductive health.   She holds a PhD in Statistics from the University of Washington where her dissertation research was related to statistical methods for space-time smoothing of surveillance and complex survey data with applications in demography and public health. While at the University of Washington, Laina was a fellow at the Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology and she served as Chair of Statistics in the Community (StatCom), a student-run volunteer organization which provides statistical consulting services free of charge to non-profit community and governmental groups. Laina also holds an MS in Biostatistics from the University of Washington and a BS in Mathematics from Western Washington University. She previously worked with Seattle Children's Research Institute in the Children's Core for Biomedical Statistics, specifically in medical research for pediatric transplantation and surgery and at the Fred Hutch in the Tobacco & Health Behavior Science Research Group, investigating behavioral interventions for smoking cessation.